Solar - Upgrade or replace outright?
The new-to-us coach has a small solar panel system. I would like to upgrade it to the point where I could reasonably hope to capture 50 or 60 amp-hours per day in light conditions that are less than ...
Forum Discussion
You don't need any battery monitor to get an idea of your daily AH consumption. (Assumes you do about the same things each day)
You go camping from home with full batteries (as established with an hydrometer) and you know the AH of the bank. Say it's 440AH.
Now each morning while camping you check your "morning voltage" (nearest thing to "resting voltage" you can get in an RV while camping) and when it gets to 12.1 (6s) or 12.2 (12s) you declare you are now at 220AH and have used 220AH. If that took two days, your daily consumption is 110AH.
You do a 50-90 so not to go below that 50%. You know you are at 90% when amps get down to 5a per battery (20 amps with 4 batts and 440AH)
So you stop the gen and now you know you are at 90% of 440 = 396.
Now you know that at 110AH/day you will be at 286 next morning or about 286/440 = 65% and should read about 12.3v.
So if it took two days to get to 50% the first time, it will now need you to recharge every day. ( You get that extra 10% (44AH) the first time by leaving home at 100%) now you do a 65-90.
whatever, the thing is you can keep track of what is going on without the Trimetric, which just confirms what you already know if you are keeping track yourself. You do need a voltmeter for the morning voltage and an ammeter to tell you when to stop the recharge at 90%. I used the ammeter on the VEC1093 but if you are using a converter, it will not have an ammeter like that. eBay time for an ammeter.
You go camping from home with full batteries (as established with an hydrometer) and you know the AH of the bank. Say it's 440AH.
Now each morning while camping you check your "morning voltage" (nearest thing to "resting voltage" you can get in an RV while camping) and when it gets to 12.1 (6s) or 12.2 (12s) you declare you are now at 220AH and have used 220AH. If that took two days, your daily consumption is 110AH.
You do a 50-90 so not to go below that 50%. You know you are at 90% when amps get down to 5a per battery (20 amps with 4 batts and 440AH)
So you stop the gen and now you know you are at 90% of 440 = 396.
Now you know that at 110AH/day you will be at 286 next morning or about 286/440 = 65% and should read about 12.3v.
So if it took two days to get to 50% the first time, it will now need you to recharge every day. ( You get that extra 10% (44AH) the first time by leaving home at 100%) now you do a 65-90.
whatever, the thing is you can keep track of what is going on without the Trimetric, which just confirms what you already know if you are keeping track yourself. You do need a voltmeter for the morning voltage and an ammeter to tell you when to stop the recharge at 90%. I used the ammeter on the VEC1093 but if you are using a converter, it will not have an ammeter like that. eBay time for an ammeter.
